112 COST ‘OF LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES
ten years before. Moreover, in recent years, as real estate
agents originally reporting rents have dropped out and new
houses have been included to fill in the gaps caused by in-
ability to trace the landlord of the old or because the owner
himself is now the occupant, the new property has not been
considered in the index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
until rents in two periods have been secured. These new
houses probably started with relatively high rents and the
increases since mav not have been so great as on the older
CHART 4B: InDEx NUMBERS oF RENTS oF WAGE EARNERS
Houses, IN AvErRAGE AMERICAN ComMmuNITIES, 1913 TO
DECEMBER, 1925, INCLUSIVE
Based on figures in Table 1 and Table 5
National Industrial Conference Board mmr
July 1914 = 100
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics sveseseecssesse
Year 1913 = 100
INDEX
NUMBERS
Dol) r—
gp pore
20.
prot ®
zg
I
2
BTL
5
ool.
813
cog of .
Sy 0 Ae
property, though the rents themselves, when first noted,
may have been much higher. Another circumstance tending
to minimize the rent increases as reported by the Bureau of
Labor Statistics is that the method of sampling often neces-
sarily leaves out of account property which changes owners
frequently, because of the limitations on the possibility of
tracing the agent. These changes in landlords and the
speculative operations involved have sent many rents sky-
rocketing in recent years, but in the nature of things little of